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translation. The wild vagaries of the Mayday-night's scene are also sadly curtailed; and the interlude of Oberon and Titania's bridal is entirely left out.

This last omission is particularly injudicious, because the crowd and tumult of contradictory images, of which so large a portion is thus struck from the page, must have been expressly designed and congregated by the poet, in order to deceive the reader's fancy, and bewilder so thoroughly all sense of the lapse of time as to render tolerable the otherwise abrupt transition from the commencement of poor Margaret's errors to the consummation of all her earthly woes. Even in the plainest and most perspicuous parts of the main action and dialogue, however, we could point out many instances where his lordship has retrenched, in the total absence, according to our notion, of any sufficient reason for retrenchment. For example: why should we lose the savage sarcasm of the fiend, when, deriding all intellectual pursuits, and extolling the substantial, as he chooses to represent them, pleasures of the senses, he exclaims to the sorely puzzled Doctor—? 'Yes-in my mind your man of speculation

Is wise and wise too is yon elfstruck beast,
Who in his briery circle champs vexation,

While all around him, north, south, west, and east,
These fair green meadows mock the sage's feast!'

or why should the scene which represents the citizens rejoicing
in the fields on Easter Sunday be deprived of its best song?
"The shepherd deck'd him for the green,
And gaily deck'd was he;

A merrier meeting ne'er was seen

Beneath our linden tree,' &c.

In our opinion a careful revision is all that is wanted to make Lord F.'s version as satisfactory as a whole, as the specimens we are about to quote will prove it to be happy in parts; and we trust that, in the favour with which his work, in its present state, has been received, the author will permit himself to find not only the reward of the talent he has already exerted, but a stimulus for his industry.

As all the world is acquainted with Madame de Staël's Germany, and Schlegel's Lectures on the Literature of the Drama, we may, we presume, take it for granted, that anything in the shape of a regular analysis of the Faust' would be superfluous in this place. Our readers cannot have forgotten the fine art with which Goethe interrupts his hero, when the vexed man of speculation' is about to seek refuge from all his troubles in a voluntary death.

'Thou lonely flask, with reverential awe,
Forth from thy shelf thy brittle frame I draw,

In thee I venerate the art of man.

Essence

*.

Essence of painless rest, untortured death,*
Extract of powers that check the human breath;
Now show your healing influence, for ye can;
I view ye, and the sight relieves my pain;
I hold ye, and my phrenzy cools again.
Here where it mixes with unbounded seas,
The stream of life runs calmer by degrees;
Smooth at my feet blue ocean sleeps in light,

And the broad sun's last rays to distant shores invite.'

Faust then takes down a goblet-and is checked for a moment by the train of recollections which the sight of that old domestic ornament' calls

up.

'I have not thought on thee this many a year.

Oft at my father's feast, the rosy wine

In thy transparent brightness learnt to shine,
And add a lustre to the good man's cheer.

Well I remember the accustomed rite

When the blithe comrades pledged thee through the night,' &c. But he recovers his resolution—and pouring the poison out of the cup exclaims

'In thee the troubles of my soul I cast,

Hail the blest drops and drain them to the last.'†

At this moment the effective interruption occurs: Faust sets the cup to his lips, and at that instant the church bells begin to ring. It is Easter morning, and the anthem is heard in the distance.The sequel is skilfully rendered:

'What thrilling sounds, what music's choral swell

Arrests the hand which death but now defied?
Dost thou proclaim, thou ever pealing bell,
The solemn hour of Easter's holy tide?

Say, you do wake for Him who came to save
The strain which angels pour'd around his grave,
When the new covenant was ratified?'.

"I hear your tidings, would that I believed!
I could be happy, though deceived.

I dare not lift my thoughts towards the spheres,
From whence that heavenly sound salutes mine ears;
And yet that anthem's long-remember'd strain

Revives the scenes of sinless youth again,

Lord F. Gower would improve his version by transposing these two lines. The original runs literally, Thou essence of all that is soft in slumber, thou extract of all that is delicately deadly.'

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The translator does not observe that this takes place just as the first rays of the dawn touch the window-whence the propriety of the original, Be this my last draught with my whole soul dedicated as a high festival-offering to the morning.'

When,

When, on the stillness of the sabbath-day,

Heaven in that peal seem'd pouring from above,
And I look'd upward for its kiss of love,

Whilst saints might wish with joy like mine to pray.
An undefined aspiration

Impell'd me from the haunts of man;
I form'd myself a new creation,

While tears of christian fervour ran.
This very song proclaim'd to childhood's ear
The solemn tide for joys for ever past,
And memory, waking while the song I hear,

Arrests my strides, and checks me at the last.
Sound on, blest strain, your task almost is done;
Tears force their way, and earth regains her son.'

vol. i. p. 43. Faust, having escaped this temptation, wanders forth into the fields with his pupil Wagner, and contemplates the universal festival. This also is spiritedly given;

'Turn round, and, from this hillock's height,
Back to the town direct thy sight.

See, from the jaws of yonder gate,
How thick the insects congregate;
They celebrate, in guise so gay,
Our Saviour's resurrection day.
From lowly roof, and stifling cell,
Where labour's murky children dwell—
From chamber close, and garret high,
From many an alley's dismal sty,
And from the venerable night,

Shed by the church's shadowy height,
They wander forth, and court the light.-
See how the myriads buzz and throng
The garden and the field along;

See, on the stream, how thick they float,
The steadier barge and heeling boat.
How yonder skiff, o'erladen, laves
Its gunwale in the rippling waves.
Yon distant mountain-path no less
Is gleaming with the tints of dress.

I hail, in yonder rout and coil,

The short-lived heaven of those who toil;
I almost shout, like them, for glee,

And am the man I seem to be.'-vol. i. p. 54.

We cannot afford room for the scenes in which Mephistopheles, in the shape of a hound, gains admission to Faust's chamber; at length assumes a human form; and, after a variety of conversation, induces the unhappy victim to seal the compact with his

blood

blood-the compact which renders him, in so far as his own act can do so, the slave of the juggling fiend. We pass over also the debauchery of the drinking cellar, and come to the scene with which the main interest of the drama opens.

Faust, now reinvested by magic art with all the graces of youth, sees, and is enamoured of Margaret-the most charming of all the creations of the poet's genius. He speaks to her-she repels him like a modest maiden, and passes on. At that instant Mephistopheles enters.

'FAUST. Hear:-you must win her; no delay!

MEPH. Win whom?

FAUST. But now she past this way.

MEPH. Oh! her. The priest to whom she came to pray
Absolved her free from sin and guile;

I listen'd by his chair the while.

The monk could scarcely send her thence
More perfect in her innocence.

Such are beyond my mischief's sphere.
FAUST. Yet she has reach'd her fifteenth year.
MEPH. You speak in Mr. Wilfull's tone;

Who, as he walk'd the garden, thought
The flowers were made for him alone.

And so much mischief there he wrought-
But check the speed with which you run.
FAUST. Pray, Mr. Check-my-speed, have done,
Quoting your saws and maxims clever;
And more to tell you I make bold,
Unless, ere midnight's bell has toll'd,
That beauty in my arms I hold,

We part at twelve-and part for ever.

MEPH. Think of the nature of the case :
I ask, at least, a fortnight's space,
The slightest opening to secure.
FAUST. Had I seven hours to seek the maid,
I should not want the devil's aid,
Her simple virtue to allure.

MEPH. You talk this like a Frenchman born!
Let not my hints awake your scorn.
Why seek to gain what you affect
By paths so simple and direct?
The joy is not so great by far
As when, in spite of bolt and bar,
Above, around her, and below,
By practice you have learnt to go:

Have sometimes stoop'd, and sometimes mounted,
As in Italian tales recounted.

FAUST. Without all this I crave and would obtain.

MEPH. My warning must be clear and plain.

This fort, 'tis not the devil's fault,
May not be taken by assault :
We cannot beat the bulwarks down,
And so must parley with the town.
FAUST. Then bear me to her place of rest,
Bring me the kerchief from her breast-
A keepsake bring, whate'er it be-
A lace-the garter from her knee.
MEPH. That you may see how I submit
To watch and tend you in your fit,
This very night you shall be led
Within her chamber-to her bed.

FAUST. And see her-clasp her?

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It is too soon: not yet.

FAUST. Seek me some gift, some jewel richly set. [FAUST departs. MEPH. Presents so soon!-he'll not be long in wooing.' &c.

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-vol. i. pp. 150-154. The next scene presents us with A small and neat Apartment? MARGARET is discovered plaiting and binding up her hair;' and her soliloquy is:

'I would give something to discover

Who 'twas that spoke so like a lover.
"Tis sure he had a mien and face
Which spoke him of a noble race.
That from his very look I told—

Besides, he would not else have been so bold.

MEPH. (to FAUST) Come in, but softly ply your feet.
FAUST. Leave me alone, I do entreat.

MEPH. Few maidens' chambers are so neat.
FAUST. Sweet dimness of the sacred room,
I hail thy chaste and sober gloom!

I feel the breeze of mental health,

Where calm content and order dwell:
The fulness of the poor man's wealth,
The freedom of his prison-cell!

[She goes in.

[Throws himself into a large arm-chair.
Receive, thou friend in joy and sorrow known,
A guest unwonted in thy calm embrace.
How oft around this patriarchal throne

Have clung the hopes of many a parent's race!
How oft at Christmas, tide of childish bliss,
Perchance for gifts that spoke the closing year,
Her own loved lips have printed many a kiss
On the old hand of him who rested here!

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